ETH, Zurich, Switzerland
UW-Madison/PD, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
The sub-detectors of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) multi-purpose particle detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have been collecting physics data from particle collisions for almost three years. During this period, the Electromagnetic Calorimeter (ECAL) Detector Control System (DCS) has contributed to the high level of availability of the experiment. This paper presents the current architecture of this distributed and heterogeneous control system alongside plans and developments for future improvements. To ensure that the system can efficiently operate and adapt to changes throughout the required operation lifetime of more than a decade, the potential legacy aspects of this kind of control system must be carefully managed. Such issues include evolving system requirements, turnover of staff members, potential benefits from new technologies and the need to follow release schedules of external software dependencies. The techniques and results of the work to continually maintain, improve and streamline the control system are presented, including the use of metrics to evaluate the impact of this effort.
